Interview with Alan Haber on Pure Pop Radio

As posted on www.buhdge.com

Listeners who crave melodic pop of the highest order should look no further than Connecticut-born, Long Island-raised tunesmith Seth Swirsky.

It was a whole lotta fun jawing with Seth on yesterday’s Pure Pop show. Seth said it felt like two guys just talking, and I’ve got to agree. I had a vague idea which way I wanted to go with our interview, but you know what they say about best laid plans. A couple of tangents and great anecdotes later, it was suddenly time to say goodbye, but hopefully not for the last time.

You probably know Seth’s songs written for other artists, including Eric Carmen, Rufus Wainwright, Smokey Robinson, Celine Dion and Al Green, although you may not know that Seth wrote them. You may know Seth from his three books of letters from baseball players, the most recent of which is Something to Write Home About, published by Random House.

You now know Seth from his superb, first solo album, 2004’s Instant Pleasure, and his current project, The Red Button, for which he joined up with ace popster Mike Ruekberg. Seth and Mike’s sixties-influenced, Beatlesque release, She’s About to Cross My Mind is, like Instant Pleasure, hall-of-fame-worthy and frankly without a whole lot of peer.

Seth’s current projects include work on his second solo album and production of a documentary entitled Beatles Stories, in which a bevy of cool people relate their Fab-related tales. You can see on Seth’s site a fab excerpt from one of the many interviews Seth has done. Smile as wide as you know you can as the legendary Norman “Hurricane” Smith simply glows while telling the story of how he knew the Beatles were going to be big. It’s really yeah-yeah-yeah-level gear.

This is one of my favorite music interviews, among the hundreds I’ve done over the past dozen years. Beatles stories, baseball chatter and great, professionally-crafted songs by one of pop’s best songwriters. What more could a deejay, or pop fan, ask for?

Listen to Alan’s interview with Seth Swirsky, presented in two parts: